


but they don't align for us

by finkpishnets



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Future Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-22
Updated: 2012-07-22
Packaged: 2017-11-10 11:47:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finkpishnets/pseuds/finkpishnets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeremy goes away with Anna at the end of season one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but they don't align for us

**Author's Note:**

> For [this](http://cassiehayes.livejournal.com/40594.html?thread=625042#t625042) prompt at the [MERRIER THE MORE](http://cassiehayes.livejournal.com/40594.html) ficathon. comment!fic.

She turns him three miles outside of New York in a motel that seems too nice for this sort of thing, her blood like copper in his mouth as she holds the pillow over him, and his body fights back even though he wants this, has wanted it since the first time he saw her turn and realized there was a whole world out there with the irony-addled ability to make him feel alive.

He knows he should be thinking about Elena, about Jenna, but right now all there is is Anna and darkness and a future he can’t even begin to contemplate.

 

+

 

They stay in New York.

Anna says it’s the best place for him while he’s still new, a city full of child runaways that no one bats an eyelid at, and Jeremy tries not to think too much about the truth in that, about how many other kids are here because of dead parents or girlfriends or drug problems. How many of them are just like him without an Anna of their own holding them up and making everything seem possible, making everything seem like it’ll be okay.

It’s not perfect but it’s better than nothing.

 

+

 

Years pass differently when they’re all you’ve got ahead of you. 

They meet others but only stick around long enough to be sociable and not memorable; mostly it’s just them, Jeremy and Anna and their little apartment with the water stains on the ceiling and the mattress they’d liberated from a skip down the street, nothing much but all they need.

Anna talks about where they’ll go one day, how they’ll live a life of almost luxury, and Jeremy smiles and nods and doesn’t let on that he knows it’s a lie. Love’s put her on her best behavior, and Jeremy -- Jeremy’s never let her teach him how to use compulsion. He doesn’t need it and he doesn’t want it, and even if his sister’s not-actual-lover hadn’t stolen his memories he hopes he’d feel the same way.

So maybe eternity will just be _this_. 

Him and Anna and a mattress.

It’s almost enough.

 

+

 

He meets Damon in a bar.

Jeremy’s working late, fake ID heavy in his wallet every time someone new walks through the door; he’s older than twenty-one now but he’ll forever look like a teenager, and he’s bored of the suspicious looks, of people looking down on him like he’s not more aware of the world than any of them, but he needs the tips if not the measly minimum wage.

Damon double takes, stares at him with narrowed eyes, and Jeremy would find it funny if he weren’t frozen.

“Well,” Damon says eventually, bravado back in place, “I assumed you were dead but I didn’t expect you to still be walking around. Welcome to the club, I suppose.”

“Thanks,” Jeremy says, rolling his eyes. “Did you want a drink? The clientele are off limits.”

Damon smirks, throws himself onto a stool, and orders a scotch with a snap of his fingers, challenge written all over his face. Jeremy’s older now though, isn’t the same kid that watched the drama of his sister’s life unfold around him through a haze of smoke and pills, and Damon’s just another guy with bright eyes sitting across from him in his bar, so he smiles and hands over the drink and lets his fingers brush against Damon’s just to say _challenge accepted_.

 

+

 

Damon doesn’t go away.

He sits on the same stool every night and tries to push Jeremy’s buttons like they didn’t used to sit on the Gilbert’s couch and play video games until Elena and Stefan appeared with thinly veiled cover-stories. It’s probably weird that all Jeremy sees when he looks back is a pair of too-blue eyes and not everything he left Mystic Falls to escape, but becoming more self-aware is just another thing he puts down to the vampirism.

So Damon doesn’t go away, and Jeremy would be lying if he said he wanted him to.

 

+

 

It takes Damon two weeks before he follows Jeremy home, and it’s only because he’d known he was there that Jeremy’s able to stop the stake in Anna’s hand before she drives it into Damon’s heart.

 

+

 

“He’s not staying,” Anna says, hands clenched like she’s itching to reach for another weapon.

“ _Please_ ,” Damon says, rolling his eyes, “like I’d want to stay in this rat-hole.”

Jeremy wonders if they all know he’s lying or if he’s just been paying too much attention.

 

+

 

“I love you,” Anna says, and Jeremy smiles, brushing a strand of hair from her eyes.

“I know.”

“I hate him,” she says, and she means it though probably not as much as she’d intended to. Jeremy nods and doesn’t say anything, and when Anna sighs and joins Damon on the couch it’s her decision.

 

+

 

Damon stays and Anna lets him.

 

+

 

Damon and Anna snark and bicker and glare but they have a history that Jeremy will never be a part of; they’re children of a different world and even when they don’t like each other there’s relief in the familiar. He knows he should be jealous, should hate the way they look at each other sometimes, lost in the past, but he doesn’t because he’s never been that hypocritical.

He loves Anna and Anna loves him, but Damon’s somewhere in the middle now, digging out a place for himself in their little world, and Jeremy’s probably not as worried about that as he should be.

 

+

 

The thing about Damon is that he loves with everything he has, and this-- this is just the first time anyone’s ever really loved him back.

 

+

 

The future’s still too long for Jeremy to contemplate, but now there’s him and Anna and Damon and a mattress, and that? That feels like maybe it’s more than enough.

It feels like it's worth it.


End file.
